After a long and tepid November and December, January has at last arrived and brought some face-biting cold to Point Park’s campus. Now that it actually feels like winter, I thought I’d gift you, the readers, some tips for surviving winter in Pittsburgh. 

First, just accept that you will feel bad. Pittsburgh winters can deplete your happiness like a dementor sucking away your soul. There will be some days it will look so gray outside that you will forget the sun has ever existed, and you will fantasize about clawing a hole in the earth and crawling into it instead of facing the outside world. 

Such is winter. 

But the important thing is that you do not, in fact, claw a hole in the earth and make a new life for yourself as a rodent-person, shying away from the flashlights of the children who come looking for you. (You have become an urban legend in this scenario.) 

Instead, you need to gather your coziest blankets and loved ones and burrow into them instead. Please only do that figuratively, as your loved ones probably would not appreciate you physically burrowing through their chest cavities and erupting through their spines. 

But retreating into them emotionally is appreciated and expected in the wintertime. If you tell them about how miserable you feel, they will most likely reciprocate your feelings, and you can all commiserate into a ball of blankets and, ideally, fuzzy socks. 

One of my favorite winter survival techniques is to buy sweaters, but not your run-of-the-mill, regular, one-color or one-pattern sweaters. Rather, I like going to Goodwills and thrift shops and finding the ugliest sweaters I can find. 

It’s empowering to make yourself uglier than your surroundings. By wearing an enormous studded cowboy shirt-slash-sweater, I am telling the weather that I am in control of the hideousness in my life. While gray skies and slush can be disheartening, absurdly ugly clothing makes the cold and wet look downright cheerful by comparison. 

One caveat: I don’t recommend purchasing clothing that knows how ugly it is. In “Terminator,” you don’t want Skynet to become self-aware, and in Pittsburgh winters, you don’t want your grotesque clothing to become self-aware. 

In a consignment shop over the weekend, I saw a hideous sweater with a smug-looking unicorn on it. Don’t buy the unicorn sweater. The unicorn is smug because it knows it’s making a statement. 

Don’t make a statement. Revel in the ugliness, revel in your friends, revel in blankets, and you’ll survive this winter.